Chocolate Espresso Cake

Similar to our Oreo Chocolate cake, this cake is exactly the same but with a shot Espresso instead of Oreo cookies. Made with an Espresso butter cream as well, this is a crowd pleaser. Depending on how big you want your cake you will need to double this recipe. For this two tier cake we doubled the cake mix ingredients.

Butter cream:

Cooking Method:

Butter your cake tins and then line with baking parer. We do this to make sure the cake comes out easy and doesnt stick. Cut a circle for the base then cut a strip to go around the inside of the tin.

In a bowl add the vinegar to the milk. The milk and vinegar react together causing the milk to forms lumps. I use this as a replacement for buttermilk. As my local Coles doesn’t seem to stock buttermilk. If you have buttermilk just use that instead of the milk and vinegar. Once done set aside and prepare the dry ingredients.

In a mixing bowl add all the dry ingredients and mix so everything is well incorporated.

Make your Espresso or coffee. You will need half a cup.

Once all dry ingredients are mixed start adding the wet ingredients.

Scrape down the sides of the the mixing bowl and give it a final mix. You might think the mixture is a bit runny but don’t worry, this is what makes the cake super moist.

Add cake batter to tins. If you want a two tier cake make sure you have two different sized tins.

Depending on the size of the tins, cooking time can vary. Cook for roughly 30-40mins. Poke the cake with a skewer, if it comes out clean the cake is ready. Set aside and let it cool.

Once the cake has cooled, remove from the tin. Use a cake cutter to flatten the top of the cake to make it nice and even and cut in half.

Place cakes on a cooling rack and let cakes cool.

Leave cakes overnight in air tight container. This way when we add the buttercream they cakes will ne completely cool but still moist. I recommend leaving the cakes outside instead of in the fridge.

To make the buttercream add room temperature butter and copha to a mixing bowl, add in the powdered sugar and vanilla and mix well.

(Optional – Espresso butter cream for in between cakes) If you want your cake to have white butter cream on the outside. Halve the mixture and set one aside. In one butter cream mixture add 1/4 of a cup of Espresso. To make your mixture a bit less runny add some more icing sugar to thicken it up.While at room temperature your cream will be a bit runny, but will harden once you put cake in the fridge.

Now that the cake and butter cream is ready, its time to start layering.

On the bottom of the cake add a bit of butter cream to help the cake stick. Add one layer of cake then one layer of butter cream. If you are making a two tier cake, crumb coat both cakes separately.

Once both cakes have been layerd its time to crumb coat. If you aren’t confident with crumb coating there are tones of videos on youtube.

Design however you want. You could even do a chocolate drip from the top tier. We left the design fairly minimalistic with just a basic crumb coating